


Rache

by scuttlesworth



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Holmes coming home, Holmescoming?, Homecoming, Revenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:14:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scuttlesworth/pseuds/scuttlesworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally published titled "Rache" over on ff.net. </p>
<p>Revenge is always terrible idea. It really is. Especially when it's undeserved, and delivered by someone as guilty - more guilty, in fact - than the recipient. He honestly doesn't care; he's not a good man, after all.  </p>
<p>Mycroft still decides to see Ms. Riley after Sherlock pines for the fjords.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mycroft Holmes is sitting in the back seat of his very luxurious, completely inconspicuous, quite tasteful black sedan. The seats are leather. The two cut crystal carafes that sit in a hand-carved rosewood holder are filled with purified water and a very singular, very elderly scotch. He is wearing a new suit made by a set of tailors who require a recommendation from an existing client to interview for. His shoes are polished to a mirror finish. And he is unhappy. 

He has instructed the driver to sit idle while he looks at the terrace house. It's not much of a house; the neighborhood is fairly generic. It isn't occupied by anyone special, either; the occupant is not beautiful, or rich, or famous. She is rather ordinary in every way save one: she is the woman Moriarty used to ruin his brother. 

He watches the front door open. She turns and uses her key to lock it, and steps lightly down onto the sidewalk. Begins her walk to the tube station as she does every morning. 

Mycroft depresses a discrete black switch. "Follow," he says without taking his eyes from her, and the car moves. 

They drift along through the light neighborhood traffic. He'll follow her to the coffee shop where she'll get a tall mocha, then he'll leave her, and he won't come back and he'll never follow her again. This is a one-off, a meditation. One can't, after all, persecute the press; and one can't, after all, truly *blame* someone for being used by Moriarty. No. One can't blame them for that at all. 

When they arrive at the coffee shop she turns, touches the door handle, and then makes an abrupt about-face and walks over to his car. Damn, he thinks vaguely. She's not a complete imbecile after all. 

She is smiling with cheerful annoyance when she raps on the driver's window with a knuckle. The driver shoots a panicked look at Mycroft, then rolls it down and gives her a professionally blank look. His off-hand is tucked down beside the seat, holding a gun. Mycroft thinks this is a bit much, but the training is meant to be used in every circumstance or it's worthless. 

"Listen, " she says. "I'm not an idiot. I know you've been following me all morning. What I'd like to know is why. If you want to offer me a job that's excellent, but I'm good, thanks. Just got a promotion." She's trying to peer past the driver; the smoked glass makes any view of the back seat impossible, and this makes her wrinkle her nose. "If you're some creepy stalker, well, you'll be all over the front pages tomorrow." 

His driver begins a valiant attempt to insert a word in edgewise when Mycroft's voice comes from the little grill on the dash. "Ms. Riley. Would you like a lift to work?" 

She gapes at the question. His driver gapes too, but has the self-possession to close his mouth and re-assume his blank look before she catches him at it. He opens the driver's door, necessitating her removing her head from the window and stepping back sharply. He steps to the back of the car and opens the back passenger door. She stares for a moment, looks around the busy street, then shrugs and scoots inside. 

Welcome to my parlor, Mycroft thinks sadly. This is an impulse and a bad one. He knows it and is going through with it anyways. He presses the button. "Drive," he says. The whites of the driver's eyes flicker as he tries to judge where, exactly, he's supposed to drive *to*, but the last stated destination was Ms. Riley's work - so. Until given other instructions, he drives. 

Once she's beside him, Mycroft doesn't bother look at her. He can smell her, hear her breathing. He rests his hands on his umbrella and contemplates the glass partition, the stitching on the back of the front seats, and the whiskey decanter. Eventually he runs out of internal monologue and slowly turns to face her. 

She's curbing her tongue, trying on silence. Very well. He twitches an eyebrow and her mouth pops open like a gunport. "If you're trying to intimidate me, you're way off base," she starts. "I don't know who you are but I'm press and there's nothing you can do that won't make the front page of-" 

"I have a story for you," Mycroft says gently. She shuts up immediately. Her ears practically swivel in his direction like radar dishes. He wants to smile but doesn't. "Of course, my portion of the statement is off the record entirely," he says, rather gently. 

She blinks. "Now, that's not fair at all," she begins. 

Mycroft waves his hand at the car and she falls silent. "I am a minor government official," he says. "If you brought any mention of my discussing this with you to light it could be difficult for me. Surely you understand my position." His voice is as oily and unctuous as it has ever been. "You are a tremendous reporter, Ms. Riley. I'm certain if I present you with the story, you'll have no trouble following it up on your own. I will be quite specific and detailed. Names, dates, locations. All I ask is that this discussion never, ever come to light." 

She shuts her mouth. He can see the gears in her head churning away. Abruptly, she nods. Too easy, he thinks. And smiles the shark-smile, the one that doesn't reach his eyes, the one that made John Watson's jaw stick out pugnaciously when they first met. Kitty Riley pales a bit. Mycroft tones it down and leans back in his seat. 

 

"My name," he says gently, "Is Mycroft Holmes. I am Sherlock Holmes' brother." He hears the sudden breath sucked in through her nose. Ignores it. "Fourteen months ago, we learned of a thing which we wanted very much. Four months later we captured the person who had it: James Moriarty. It was a very well-executed operation which, on reflection, I do believe he set the stage for. We were completely deceived and thought it was his bad luck, an informant, and our hard work which had done the job." Mycroft's jaw clenches and his lip twitches. "We locked him in a cell, drugged him, beat him, shocked him, and drowned him. He would not talk. We kept at it for six weeks. He never so much as whispered a word until we said one name." Mycroft falls silent, his shoulders hunching. "Until we said Sherlock's name." 

"So, like a good little official, I took the line I was given. I sat with him and talked to him. Talked for hours and hours, Kitty, and listened to Jim go off on rant after rant. Completely substanceless but speech nonetheless, and modern psychology believes that initiating speech is the key to opening the person, tog getting more and more and more. Just start with a single sentence of dialogue and I can have your life's story, your every secret, in a matter of hours." He is smiling a thin-lipped grim little smile now. "Except, I do believe modern psychology does not have a word for James Moriarty. Not in their definitions. Because although I gave him my brother's life bound in leather and embossed in gold, he did not give us one… single… thing." 

Now he turns and looks at her. She's pressed back against the door, sensibly frightened. "Off the record still, m'dear," he says gently, and she flinches. His satisfaction is a warmth which slides out from under his breastbone. "Of course we could have killed him, but then we'd never get what we wanted from him. So we let him go." Mycroft is watching her. She swallows. "You know the rest," Mycroft murmurs. "The perfect story you were given. The opportunity of a lifetime, right into your hands. You probably thought it was you, getting the information from your reluctant source. He let you think it was all your idea. Let you research it." Mycroft's voice has some unwanted sympathy in it now. He turns his head and watches the road through two layers of glass. "Don't worry," he says after a moment of silence. "You're not the only one he fooled." 

The silence is nearly perfect. The insulation on the car leaves the sound of the motorway distant, the vibrations as they smoothly glide over cracks and bumps in the pavement nearly nonexistent. It stretches on and on until she chokes out a reply. "You can't prove any of it," she says, and Mycroft lets his shoulders shrug. 

"I don't particularly feel the need to," he replies. "This is off the record, after all. It'll never ever be published. By anyone, in any format. Because you are a reporter of your word and you wish to go far in this business; you wish to get more scoops, more stories, and it would look very poorly indeed if you outed a source who brought you such a tale." He feels satisfaction mingled with sadness. The timing is impeccable, as always. The car stops. She's staring at him and does not seem to realize. Mycroft watches how fixed she is on his person with sly delight as his driver gets out and the door behind her chunks open a bit - she jumps, starts to fall, flails about. Would land on her ass in front of her own office, with all her co-workers watching, if his driver didn't catch her arm and help her to her feet. She's shaking as she looks at the car, but she leans in to grab her purse. 

Mycroft leans over when she reaches back in. Grasps her wrist; she nearly shrieks, but doesn't tug. Mycroft presses a small slip of paper into her hand with an enigmatic smile. "An address," he says. "Empty now, of course, but you may find the view from the windows on the second story interesting." 

She yanks her hand free, whirls and stalks away. Mycroft watches her uneven wobble vanish as she gets her poise back. 

She clenches her hand around the scrap of paper. Does not drop it. 

Mycroft leans back into the car. His driver closes the back door, get in, tugs his own door shut. Glances in the mirror. Waits. 

No orders come; eventually he pulls out and begins to drive, letting his employer watch the city slide by past the window, his pinched face slowly drooping with years and secrets and schemes. 

 

___

 

"Why?" asks Anthea later, as she takes his coat. 

"Can you imagine," he replies, "a revenge more fitting for such an ambitious woman than a story of this magnitude which she can never confirm and never publish?" 

Anthea's face blanks, then a smile slips over her secretive lips. "No," she replies, and moves away to get him a drink.


	2. Sooner Or Later, Everyone Falls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted as a separate story with the same title over on ff.net. 
> 
> Three years after the first chapter. Sherlock is coming home; Mycroft has some cleanup to do. He attends to it personally. It's a very personal matter, after all.

From: Annon  
To: MH  
It's done. Bring me home.

 

From: MH  
To: Annon  
It's about time.  
JNB 12:40am    LHR 5:10pm    2 Stops    17h 30m   Kenya Airlines.   
Tickets are under the name Ecklles H. Moorsh.

 

 

The fact that there was no return text taking him to task for his creative pseudonym somewhat worried Mycroft. Ordinarily, there would have been a scathing reply. Something bitter and cynical and witty. Ever since he'd left, their conversations had been… pithy. Short. Functional. Lacking in any trace of their usual banter. Once, Mycroft would have sworn that a focused, on-target Sherlock was his fondest wish. Now he found himself slightly…. unsettled. Making up the other half of the conversation in his own mind, the way he thought it ought to go, which was a disgusting habit he'd cured himself of years ago for being perfectly pointless. Only family, he thought with disgust, and tossed the phone with rather more force than necessary onto the desk's leather blotter.

Time to get to work.

There was a memory stick. There was always a memory stick in Mycroft's line of work, but this was one he'd been saving for a special occasion. This occasion. A Holmes-coming present of sorts. He tucked it into his breast pocket next to the silk square, took up his umbrella, and strode out into the world. Anthea rose elegantly from the sofa in the outer office and followed him without once looking up from her texting. She had tremendous peripheral vision, that girl, Mycroft thought fondly.

They walked the park. Stopped for coffee. Mycroft paused, as though struck by generosity, and pulled a ten-pound note from his pocket. Dropped it into the collection box of a street guitarist who was playing nearby. The man nodded, pocketed the tenner with one quick motion; Mycroft was already gone.

 

Her name is irrelevant to his purposes, except as a piece of data meant to intimidate her. He won't use it. He wants her intrigued, not frightened. She is twenty-three, mixed Caribbean and Indian blood, and beautiful. This has not helped her in her chosen profession so far, but it may in the future once she learns how to manage it. She is currently between boyfriends and doing a stock piece on popular internet memes targeted at the older generation who don't understand them. It will be a flop; the older generation don't want to hear about the younger generation from the younger generation's mouth, they want to hear about it from their own age group.

She opens the door to her flat, sighing as she kicks off her shoes. Hangs up her keys and press pass on the hooks by the door, drops her scarf and hat and mittens on the table, and is halfway into the living room before she notices that the light is already on and there's a strange man sitting in the chair she thinks of as the guest chair. He's wearing a black suit, leaning back, arms stretched out in front of him and hands resting on a black umbrella. It's a terribly uncomfortable chair. She has a completely illegal taser out and aimed at him immediately; he raises an eyebrow in respect. She's already got her phone out with her other hand and her finger is over the speed dial when he speaks.

"No need for that," he says in a plummy voice, every letter enunciated as clearly as though it were cut out and pasted upon the scene. "I'm merely here as an… anonymous source." He smiles, and the smile does not reach his eyes. Her taser does not waver, but her finger hesitates. Hovers.

"Talk, then," she says.

He twitches two of his fingers on the umbrella handle, and she sees that he's holding a slip of paper between them. He raises his hand gracefully and lets the paper flutter down onto the table beside the chair. "There was an article three years ago. Sherlock Holmes. You should have no problem finding the woman who wrote the original; she's risen quite high in the journalism world, these past years. It may be more challenging to get an interview, but I'm quite certain you'll manage." Slowly stands to his full, rather impressive height. Nods and steps past her as he leaves her flat. The heels of his very pricy leather shoes click on the tile of the entryway, and the door snicks shut behind him while she stares, bemused.

She's slow to put the taser away. That door was locked, she thinks, I unlocked it. Surely it was locked. She steps over to the table, where the little slip of paper sits. There's writing. It's been printed in neat block letters, pencil on a torn-off strip of notepaper. It's a web address. She picks it up. Fingers it, a thoughtful expression on her face.

"What the hell," she says lightly to herself, but her eyes are gleaming and she's got a little smile on her face as she heads over to her laptop.

 

 

A day later, an audio track purporting to be the last conversation between disgraced investigator Sherlock Holmes and his accomplice Richard Brook is both the most-downloaded track on two of the top three pirate and leak sites, and the subject of an article by a relatively unknown young reporter working an otherwise unremarkable tech beat for a small London paper. Her interview with Kitty Reilly is superb, showing the woman's confusion and just the edges of doubt as she listens to the track for the first time. Shortly thereafter, there are more reporters camped outside Ms. Rilley's flat. More audio surveillance turns up on leak sites. She does not handle being in the spotlight well.

She is hurrying away from work the next afternoon, slipping out the service entrance while trying to avoid a crowd of her fellow reporters lounging around outside the news office front doors. She bumps into a tall, dark-suited chest. Gasps out an apology before looking up and freezing.

Mycroft smiles down at her. "Ms. Rilley," he says, his voice as rich with satisfaction as it has ever been. "However do you do." He tips an invisible hat to her and steps away, umbrella tip clicking on the pavement.

She stares after him, then looks around wildly. "Here!" she calls, but there's no-one to see her except the janitor sweeping the alley, and she can see the dark suited back vanishing with a jaunty stroll around the corner, and she is alone and gasping, trying not to cry. It's not fair, she thinks, furious and terrified. I was just doing my job. It was a good story. Legit. Not fair.

Mycroft is positively smirking as he gets into the car. He presses the discrete little intercom switch. "Airport," he says, and the car moves smoothly away from the curb.

Welcome home from the war, little brother. Would you like a lift?


End file.
